With Nvidia having just recently given their top lines a bit of an upgrade, there's little doubt enthusiasts have been wondering when AMD would be revamping their offerings. Well now timetables have begun to surface. The RV790 core, long known to be AMD's answer to the 55nm GT200b, is finally on its way, expected to be released as the HD4890 some time in April.

The release will start with a base card with clock speeds of 850MHz core and 975MHz GDDR5 memory set to come out in the middle of the month. At the end of April, an OC edition will released bearing increased clock speeds and 1GB GDDR5 memory. With these clocks, combined with an increase to 960 stream processors, AMD expects this new card to put out a level of performance 25-30% greater than that of the current HD4870. The HD4890 is expected to have a starting retail price of $299.

In addition to this new flagship GPU, AMD is looking to update their mid-range in April as well. The RV740 will essentially be a 40nm refresh of the RV770LE, aka the HD4830. There are, however, a few tweaks. While the RV740 will maintain the same number of stream processors (640 SPs) and memory clock speeds (900MHz), the memory will actually be GDDR5 with a 128-bit interface.

Will these new GPUs live up to the HD4000 series name and continue to give AMD life in the graphics sector?